Life Force Stealers
by Reviewer of Time
Summary: The sudden appearance of a life-stealing entity disrupts everyone's life. Goku and company must identify and eliminate the threat before everyone is turned to dust.


Life Force Thieves

Chapter 1

"Youth Stolen"

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This chapter and later ones will have any author's notes at the bottom.

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Goku and Vegeta stared at each other in silence across the table. Goku looked away, glancing around randomly. Vegeta continued his cold, hard stare.

It had been several weeks since a stranger arrived to tell everyone about the androids that would arrive in the distant future. He had used his time machine to come to the time period as they knew it and warn them. With him gone, everyone had time to train for the future challenges. A new challenge presented itself meanwhile, however. This challenge was not expected by anyone -- and apparently, not even by the person from the future.

Still more silence stood in the room. Finally, Master Roshi stepped out of his bedroom. He walked over to Goku and Vegeta slowly. His head was not held high. Goku snapped back to reality, and Vegeta's head aquatically turned to Roshi -- the same stare still on his face.

"He's not doing well at all... I sense nothing but weakness from him," Roshi said.

Goku looked concerned, but was at a loss of words.

"Well, perhaps that stranger from the future wasn't right after all," Vegeta said. He made his trademark smirk and spoke his voice, which naturally had a touch of arrogance. "I wonder if he was attempting to deceive us? Who knows... perhaps he was wrong about your time of death." He was looking directly at Goku.

Goku chuckled. "Yeah, well, if what everything he said really wasn't right, I can tell you that I'm going to live much longer than you and him might think."

"I think the worry right now is your son, Goku," Roshi said. "He won't be able to do anything... he could barely lift a drinking cup -- and that's made of plastic!"

Goku stood up and walked towards Roshi's room, ignoring Vegeta's obvious eye contact with him. Roshi turned and closed the door behind him, and then sat down at the table where Vegeta was sitting. Vegeta looked odd, just sitting there, with this consistent look of insensitivity on his face. It's highly unusual that he would have stayed in one place this long -- but, then again, the situation's circumstances were unusual.

Roshi shook his head. "To have your energy sucked and life sucked right out from you... it must be a bad experience..."

Vegeta looked up. "What do you expect? I imagine it would be an especially bad experience for you... you've already lost most of your life already."

Roshi became defensive. "You're not immortal, you know..." Vegeta's eyes widened momentarily. Roshi hit a sore spot. "You're in as much danger as well... if you come into contact with that thing..."

Vegeta spoke with sudden agitation. "We don't even know what it is!" A bit of tension held in the air for a moment. He wanted to say something... witty to complete his sentence. Maybe an attack at Goku. Perhaps a dash at the fighting abilities of his son. But, Roshi had a point: he could be hurt just as badly as Gohan had been. No one had seen a threat like this before. He was at a loss of words.

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"Gohan, how are you doing?" Goku said, sitting next to his son in bed.

Gohan's eyes were barely open. His normally black, thick, spiky hair was now wilted and gray-white. Several wrinkles outlined his face. The portion of his upper body that was not covered by a blanket lacked in lean body mass. His mouth was open, even when he was silent. Goku and Roshi understood by looking at him that he wasn't in a state of suffering, but his life force was low to a point where he was barely alive.

"Fine," he breathed. "Daddy."

"Gohan..." Goku stopped himself. He had many questions to ask him. What attacked him? How did it attack him? Where did it attack him? He could tell that Gohan had to struggle to say those two last words. For now, he was going to let him rest.

Goku let his last word hang in the air as a mixture of love and concern. He patted his son on the head. He stood up, and walked out. Gohan seemed to be lying somewhere between consciousness and dreaming. He was a big boy.. and Goku didn't usually concern himself (intentionally) with the emotional aspects of problems -- unlike ChiChi -- but this situation was so fast that it caught everybody by surprise.

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"No, sensu beans didn't work, either," Roshi said to Vegeta, across the table.

"Hmph." This situation didn't directly concern Vegeta. He didn't know what the threat was. This situation just recently happened; Bulma, Chichi and the others haven't found out about it, yet. There was really no need to jump up and spring to action, right?

Goku walked out from the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He walked over to the table and stood next to Vegeta. "Guys, I'm going to fly around the area and see if I can find anything out of the ordinary."

Vegeta immediately stood up. "I'm going with you," he said. "If there is something out there, I want to be the first to destroy it."

Goku looked at Vegeta, nodded, and started to walk towards the door, with Vegeta following him.

"If you encounter whatever it is out there, you might end up like Gohan, too," Roshi exclaimed.

Goku stopped at the door, without turning around to look back at Roshi. "Well... someone has got... to find out what it is eventually. The others are still out. They could be in danger, too."

"What are we going to do? Sit around and do nothing while something makes us your age?" Vegeta said.

Roshi's face twitched. That was low. That was very low. But, personal feelings aside, he got the picture. Someone would need to investigate this eventually.

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Gohan glanced into space, his mouth still hanging open and his face in the same dreary expression as it was earlier. His eyes moved to the window -- he could see two figures enclosed in energy, moving away quickly. They disappeared into the horizon.

He then saw something else -- a yellow glow in the distance, to the far left of the horizon. It appeared to be growing larger and larger. Gohan's eyes widened when he realized that it was getting closer and closer. What little senses he still had didn't give him an indication of any real power; his senses felt as though they were being pulled.. towards the new source of energy.

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Notes:

As with most stories, reviews and comments encourage the author. Feel free to write them.

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